


Special Circumstances III: Some Things Can't Be Fixed

by Viridian5



Series: Dark Angel [3]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-04-15
Updated: 1998-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 08:19:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Consortium starts to dismantle the previous X-Files fixer program before Mulder finds out about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Special Circumstances III: Some Things Can't Be Fixed

**Author's Note:**

> This one takes place a few months before the show's pilot. You don't have to be familiar with "SC I: A Show of Power" or "SC II: Under Surveillance" to understand this story, but it might deepen the experience.

_"She stays pressed against the wall so  
She can see the door"_  
  -- "Alice" by the Sisters of Mercy  
\-----------------------------------------------------------

The Happy Canning Warehouse  
Pittsburgh, PA  
October 8, 1991

Special Agent Danielle Morley felt sharp, cold steel kiss the air just in front of her. She leaped for the gun on the floor with the Immortal and his sword close on her heels. She changed her trajectory in time to avoid being sliced. The Immortals always took wonderful care of their swords, honing them to a fine razor's sharpness, the better to cleave easily through the necks of their opponents.

"Hold still, Auslander. Just get it over with," the Immortal said.

"We're not exactly intimate, but you should know me better by now, Brandenburg," she answered as she threw a knife toward his left eye.

He knocked it away with his sword with the ease centuries of practice give a fighter. He sneered. "You don't still hold Berlin against me, do you?"

"Oh, no, being on the run from the fine comrades of the Communist Party always entertains me." She dropped to the floor and used its slickness to slide toward him, under his guard. As he started to crouch down to deal with her, she kicked up at his chin, snapping his neck, with the momentum knocking him down onto his back. Paralysis would set in soon.

He could still talk as she picked up his own sword and stood over him. "This can't be happening. I've seen empires rise and fall--"

She sneered. "You're that old, and you still think life is fair?" She brought his own sword down on his neck, neatly severing it, and immediately felt the power begin to build. Danielle Morley picked up the head, tossed it out the window, and started to run for her life.

If she had stayed to watch she would see electricity snaking from the corpse up the abandoned warehouse's walls, blowing out ancient lamps and power outlets, running over dilapidated machinery. She felt and heard it snapping at her back like a ravening beast. She slid down the stair rail and hit the floor at a dead run.

Earlier she had carefully pulled a few boards away from the entrance to get in. Now she burst through, using her momentum to get her out in an explosion of old wood. The shock wave as the building exploded threw her to the gravel. She hit with a force she felt through her leather jacket. The heat of the fire poured over her.

Special Agent Joseph Frank skidded to a halt in their rental car and opened the passenger door. She leapt in just as chunks of burning debris hit the ground and the car. The rental company would be pissed.

Joe whistled. "No need to fix this site. Brandenburg sanitized himself."

"Yeah, and he makes his own gravy," she answered with a grin. "But the Watcher assigned to his case is going to realize that something's up. Hell, all of Pittsburgh's going to notice this one."

"I don't think the Watcher will be a problem. I suspect that Brandenburg's Watcher will be sleeping it off for hours to come." He smirked then winced as a giant chunk of rubble hit the roof with a thud. "You'd think one of the two organizations would change their names."

"Well, that's what happens when you start up in the ancient times before trademark laws. I think it should be the Watchers who monitor the Immortals who should change their name. I mean, the other group watches _everything_."

"What are you waiting for?" he asked, understanding her body language.

"A little less flaming, falling wreckage. Okay. Pull up to the end of the building and make a left, then drive till I tell you to stop. Okay, go, go, stop!" She opened the door and pulled Brandenburg's head off the ground.

"Will you think any less of me as a man if I say that's disgusting?"

"Not at all. If we don't pack this in ice, it'll be worse. But it should buy us some good will with the Consortium."

Joe sighed. "They're going to make their move against us all soon, aren't they, now that they gave Mulder an X-Files department and an office?" It wasn't really a question.

"Trying to kill us and succeeding are very different things."

******************************************************

The J. Edgar Hoover Building  
Washington, D.C.  
October 9, 1991

"Not bad," "Mr. Morley" said as he examined the head. "R&amp;D will be very happy." He lit another Morley cigarette and dragged deeply at it. He knew that the smoke annoyed Dan's enhanced senses.

"That's what we figured, sir," Agent Frank said. "Agent Morley says that the head belongs to the guy who ruined one of the operations she had been working on in Berlin in 1985." He spoke for himself and his partner now that relations between Dan and that black-lunged bastard kept hitting new lows. They played at being supervisor and agent, and Danielle dressed as formally as any other female agent, but she had lost the ability to keep her eyes hooded around him. Rage and contempt glittered in her green eyes.

Originally she'd taken the name "Danielle _Morley_" for her work with the X-Files as a joke. She didn't seem to find it funny anymore.

"I'm sure he's sorry now. Alice," Morley said deliberately, knowing she hated the name Child Services had given her long ago, "Agent Mulder has been very impressed with your notes on the X-Files. The precision and the level of detail. He's been trying to find out who wrote them. What did you mean the initials 'S.F.' to stand for anyway?"

She hesitated. "'Science fiction,' sir."

He knew that she lied to him and shrugged it off. "Davidson is dead, and Podeszwa is in the hospital. They weren't as successful with their Immortal."

Davidson and Podeszwa comprised the other Special Circumstances X-Files fixer crew. She wouldn't miss Davidson--no one would-- but she feared for Podeszwa. Injured and alone, he would be easier prey for the assassins she expected.

"Do you want me to go out and kill that Immortal too, sir?"

"No, I have another assignment for you. Dismissed."

Danielle Morley immediately found a phone and called the usual hospital. She quickly reached Karl Podeszwa. "Hey, Podeszwa, did you hear about the Polish homosexual?" she asked.

"Yeah, he sleeps with women. Hi, Dan."

"Someday I'll stump you, even if it takes me another two years." One day she would find a dumb-Polack joke that Podeszwa hadn't heard. When she first started the tradition, she hadn't realized how many dumb-Polack jokes there were or that his being a big, blond slab of beef with an obviously ethnic name would expose him to all of them. She never lost hope though. "How are you doing?"

"I have staples holding my guts in. How do you think I'm doing? Davidson's dead," he rasped. "He was an asshole, but--"

"He was your partner. Podeszwa, I want you to be careful. I think they'll be making their move soon. Morley threw Mulder's growing exploration into the X-Files into my face."

"Yes, our precious Fox Mulder shouldn't have a clue about how the X-Files were investigated and handled before he brought his golden boy self in."

"That's not fair. It's not his fault he's been dragged in by the undertow. Call in some muscle. I don't want you spilling your guts on the floor defending yourself."

"I'll keep that in mind. Be careful, Dan. They hate you most of all."

****************************************************

Blooming Grove, PA  
October 10-11, 1991

"Man, someone has a real hard-on for Pennsylvania right now," Dan said softly into her headset as she perched in a tree, rifle ready. Even from up there she could smell the freshly butchered meat lying in the clearing below. These woods seemed to be her quarry's favorite hunting ground.

She no longer wore what she called her professional drag attire; now she dressed as herself in black leather and denim again. //Alice in her party dress... Alice in her party dressed to kill,// she thought with a smile.

"Yeah, but this is a big difference. We've gone from southwest to northeast PA," said Joe's voice in her earplug.

"Oh, yeah. Do you see our big dog yet?"

"Nope, and no where wolf jokes."

"Wouldn't dream of it. If this is a simple drop &amp; bag, why do I have such a bad feeling?"

"You always have a bad feeling. Wait, what's going on?" Joe asked.

Dan heard the murmur of distant voices and the crackling of brush in her earplug. "Run, Joe. Please, Joe, run." Gunfire burst into her ear, forcing her to pull out the plug. "Joe!" She hit the ground at a run, skimming over uneven terrain and obstructive underbrush. The full moon cast odd blue shadows, but she didn't let the unusual lighting fool or concern her.

She reached the spot where Joe should have been and saw only the Consortium's standard murder-for-hire. Dan fired at the first suit she saw and kept on going until no one remained standing. She took four men down. She picked her way over the bodies until she found the only one that mattered to her.

Joseph Eric Frank, her partner of about three and a half years, stared up empty-eyed at the star-studded sky with most of his chest missing. She gently shut his eyes before rigor mortis set in. He looked less surprised that way.

She felt the tears coming in convulsions and screamed. She had never lived a stable life, and Joe--partner, friend, and father figure--had been the closest thing to a fixed point she had ever known.

The possibility of violent death remained a given in their field, but you weren't supposed to be shot down by your own people.

She suddenly heard a low growl. All the blood had drawn the team's quarry. It stood about six feet tall with thick brown fur and long yellowed teeth and claws. It looked majestic in its own terrible way.

Her rifle was empty, so she picked up one of Joe's guns, also loaded with silver bullets, and shot the werewolf through the heart and head. It started reverting to human form as soon as it hit the ground, but she didn't care because she was too busy looting the bodies for guns and ammo. As Dan settled down to wait, she started to sing softly through the tears, "Alice in her party dress / She thanks you kindly so serene / She needs you like she needs her tranqs / To tell her that the world is clean..."

At 7 a.m. a fixer crew arrived to clean up the mess. Within ten minutes their corpses contributed to that mess. Ditto 9 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. At noon when she heard the police coming she picked up Joe's body, took it to the car, and posed and covered it with blankets so it looked like he was sleeping. Then she returned to spy from a distance.

She wanted to make sure that this scene didn't disappear, at least not as easily as usual. This police report would be the only real memorial Joe would get. He told her once that, since he had no family left and very little money, he wanted a funeral pyre.

To her great surprise, Mulder walked with the local state police. Someone had screwed up royally. She smiled. Let him see.

****************************************************

Mulder's eyes scanned a scene that could be a major hunting accident or Jonestown revisited. Fourteen bodies. To think that he had come here on the strength of an alleged werewolf sighting only to find a massacre. Even odder, every corpse but one wore a suit and looked like a government employee. It made him wonder if he'd stumbled on cover-upus interruptus in its unnatural habitat.

One of these things is not like the other... The flesh around the bullet holes on the one naked corpse had the strangest look to it, as if gangrene had set in. Mulder had already asked the local M.E. to look into that, while Mulder looked for silver bullets in the surrounding woods.

Someone else had been here and left him gifts. He hoped that he could find out whom.

When he turned his head he saw in the distance a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, her bleak eyes smudges of bruised shadow and eye liner, staring dully at the scene. She looked sad and worn. He felt a stab of pain at the feeling that he knew her, that she had helped him out more than once. On the hunch that she was important somehow, he started to walk toward her. She gave him a look then ducked behind a tree trunk. When he got there she had vanished.

******************************************************

Interstate 84  
Middletown, NY  
October 13, 1991

As Claudia Konanykhine drove, she ran a hand through her newly blond hair. She couldn't wait for it to grow long enough that she wouldn't need the extensions any longer. For now she needed to get as far away from her previous look as she could.

A self-employed free agent now, she had found herself an assignment hunting what seemed to be a supernatural serial killer. With Mulder working the X-Files, she would be better off laying low or fading into a "normal" job for a while, but she couldn't do it. She needed to work to forget her dead for awhile. Podeszwa had died fighting, taking three operatives down with him, but had still died. She hadn't managed to get back to Virginia in time to help him. Now no record of the two Special Circumstances X- Files teams existed but her memory.

She, who had often been called the Angel of Death, found that she couldn't kill just anyone anymore. She wanted to take down the monsters, the killers and destroyers of lives who used their power or their technology or the law to keep them safe from justice. The supernatural, the mutants, the Consortium.

For now the people she most wanted dead were on the alert, surrounded by flunkies. Her little massacre had scared people, made them start to look over their shoulders. Let them. They would eventually get lax and complacent.

Joe and Podeszwa's deaths would seem quick and clean compared to what she intended for the bastards who had used and disposed of them all. As for _him_... She would let that black-lunged manipulator live to watch the child he'd thrown to the wolves become the most efficient and deadliest wolf of all.

Some things could never be fixed, but she could try.

### End


End file.
